Book Study: The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom (Part Two)

The Covenant of Works and Positive Law in Eden

All right.

Well, for those that aren't able to make it with us live, who are going to listen to this later, we're going to start with a simple overview, just kind of walk through the two chapters together, and then we'll open it up for a Q &A, and then at the very end, we'll close it up with some final thoughts and applications for preaching and just for your own personal life, and then we'll call it quits for the night.

So, Justin, once you get us going, I know that you kind of had an outline. Let's walk through that outline and kind of dialogue just a little bit to get the juices flowing, and then we already got one question, we'll get a couple more in, I'm sure, as we're going.

So, in Renahan's book, he breaks down, after the introductory material that we covered last time, he considers three kingdoms, the kingdom of creation, the kingdom of Israel, and the kingdom of Christ, those distinctions.

I mean, John and I were talking about it. I think they're helpful to some extent. Tonight, we're talking about the kingdom of creation, as Renahan would describe it and define it and outline it, and in talking about that kingdom of creation, we're talking about the covenant of works that God made with Adam in the garden, and we were talking about the covenant God made with Noah.

And so we'll begin by talking about the covenant of works, which is the conditional covenant that God made with Adam in the garden of Eden, and where we might begin in thinking about that covenant, certainly as we would understand God being the creator of all mankind, making man uniquely in his image, being Adam's creator in a particular sense, Adam is obligated just by way of that creator-creature relationship to obey and do as his creator would have him do.

That might be a way that we would talk about the natural law, the law of God in one sense that's been written on the hearts of man is written into us in creation in that regard. Sam talks about that in the book somewhat, but then when it comes to the covenant of works in particular, there is a distinction between just that natural relationship that Adam has as creature to creator, where God, on top of the obligation that Adam has by way of just being God's creation, God adds what we would call positive laws or positive commands onto that obligation.

So this is where he outlines what Adam is to positively be doing. He prescribes, Adam is to cultivate, he is to live in the garden and work it and protect it. He is to fill the earth and subdue it, et cetera.

And then he also makes a prohibition that you are not to eat of this one particular tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and so a positive law, just to be very clear, what we mean by that is that an action that in and of itself is not moral or immoral becomes so through a command given by God, and so the tree, the eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is such a positive law.

To eat of a tree is not inherently wicked, but when God says, this is good for you to do and this is bad for you to do, don't do that, to then do that becomes immoral at that point and it becomes sin because it is a violation of that positive law that God has given.

Any comments there, John?

Up to that.

Yeah, so I'm curious how many are new, if you just throw it in the chat, how many are new to covenant theology, covenant of works, this is the first time reading this chapter, you've interacted with it, anybody at all say, yeah, I'm super new to covenant theology.

Yep.

Okay, so covenant theology, when it comes down to the covenant of works, this is not only important for your understanding of the baseline of covenant theology, but it's also really important to understand, I would say, redemption or an imputation theology.

So imputation meaning that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us and our sin is imputed to him. So working through this, what we really want and hope for you guys is that you have a really solid foundation and a lot of what Justin just said, if you have questions, if you're unfamiliar with what he said, you need to throw them into the Q &A, so Justin and I have been swimming in this pool and the water, it's not a shocker to us anymore.

I can remember the first time I was introduced to covenant of works, the biggest pushback, which Rinehan gets into it in his book, is the word concept fallacy of, well, that is not in the Bible covenant of works, therefore I don't believe in it, which is a mistake to make because you're not understanding biblical covenant theology, you're not understanding biblical covenants and how they work.

Yeah, it's worth saying, John, that the covenant of works is perhaps the one that is pushed back against more than any of the others, just because of the word concept fallacy and just the blowback that you get, because people will say, well, was it really a covenant that God made, and in particular, as we move forward to describe more aspects of this covenant, like the promises and the sanctions and things associated with it, people will ask questions and hopefully we'll get into some of that subject matter tonight in a way that's helpful.

So let's get back to the covenant of works itself and think about it some more. The promises that God makes to Adam in reward for keeping this covenant, for doing as he is told, we would understand biblically, and Sam outlines this, I think, well in the book, that the reward for keeping this covenant of works and obeying the positive laws that God gave Adam would be eternal life in a blessed state that is secure and unshakable with God for eternity.

And one of the ways that we would want to talk about that is via the covenant symbol of the tree of life that exists in the garden of Eden, and then as we trace that tree, in Genesis 2 it first shows up, it's in the midst of the garden.

Then in Genesis 3, we see that God, because of Adam's violation of the covenant, God not only casts Adam and Eve out of the garden, out of his benevolent and immediate presence, there are cherubim set there to guard the way to the tree of life because Adam and Eve, on their own, no longer have access to that tree because they have violated the covenant that God made with them.

And then that tree of life shows up again at the end of the Bible in Revelation 2 and Revelation 22, and those are significant passages because we see that the way to the tree of life is through Christ, by persevering in Christ, and then in Revelation 22, in the consummation of all things, the tree of life is on both sides of the river that flows out of the throne of God.

And obviously the redeemed are blessed forever around God in His presence, in the presence of the tree of life for eternity. Another reason that we would argue that the promise to Adam for keeping the covenant of works is, you will have eternal life, is because of the relationship that we see that John hinted at already between Adam and Christ.

We see that what we lost in Adam, we now have in Jesus. And how, in one sense, if Adam had been able to not fail, if Adam had kept the covenant, we would have received through Adam what we now receive through Jesus.

And that also is a theological line of reasoning that many before us in the Reformed tradition have held to, in understanding the covenant headship, the federal headship of Adam and Christ, and how Adam, in that sense, is a pattern for the work of Christ to come.

I hope that makes some sense. John, please jump in and maybe unpack the promises piece in the eternal life piece.

When you're being introduced to covenant theology, one of the things you have to do, even with the Bible, is understand that what is seen in the types and shadows or in a very small symbols and signs in hidden language becomes clear as the story unfolds.

For instance, going back to the garden when God makes the promise to Adam and Eve, we get into this a little bit later in the book, but before he brings the curse upon Adam and Eve for their disobedience to the covenant, in the curse to the serpent, he gives the promise of grace.

And early on, that is so small. It's one line, through you, Eve, the seed will come and crush the head of the serpent, he will bruise his heel. And it is such a small, simple statement that gains so much breadth and it gains so much explanation as scripture goes on.

So, when we're talking about covenant theology and this covenant works with Adam, we are using all of scripture to help formulate the interaction between Adam and Eve, right? So, even in Renahan's book, just to kind of add on what you were saying there, Justin, in Renahan's book, you have all of the makings of covenant language happening here, right?

You have the creator and the created, and you have the rightful owner who can determine and demand what will be done of the created, and so he puts him in the garden, there's rules placed about him at where he becomes the ruler and the headship, we'll get into this a little bit.

But what is key here is this language of you will do, I will do, right? If you don't do, I will do. You hear this language, and this becomes very prominent in covenant language as you move on throughout the Old Testament, right?

So, what is it that Adam has been told, the positive command, as it's said in the book, what has it been given to him? Don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, right?

Yeah, so kind of by way of recap, just to where we are up to this point, and then maybe a couple of other thoughts on the covenant of works before we move on to Noah, the covenant of works is the conditional covenant that God made with Adam in the garden.

There is Adam's natural obligation to obey his creator, but then God gives him positive laws that he is to do these things and then not do these. There are promises associated with keeping those positive laws, with keeping the commands and keeping the covenant, but there are sanctions involved with breaking them, namely that death will come.

In the day that you eat of it, you will surely die. So, in all of these pieces, guys, we have all of the makeup of a covenant. We have positive law, right, given. We have promises associated with the keeping of that positive law, and we have sanctions associated with breaking it, and you have the parties of God and Adam, so you have everything that you need there to have a covenant, though the language of covenant is not used in Genesis.

I think we would contend that Hosea and others use covenant language about what God did in terms of his relationship to Adam, but we know that when Adam broke the covenant, the sanctions rolled down, and so death came to Adam.

Physical death came immediately, though it would unfold over the course of Adam's life. Adam began to die physically at the moment in which he sinned, but in a more devastating way, I guess I would say, we understand that spiritually, he did die in a punctiliar fashion.

He became corrupted in all of his faculties of mind, soul, and body, so to.

Speak.

The immaterial and the material part of Adam were fundamentally and tragically corrupted. Death became inevitable. That's right. It's death and taxes, right? Those are the only things that are certain, and life is uncertain now as a result of the fall of Adam, and so that's because the covenant was broken and the curse is accompaniment.

The last thing I would say about the covenant of works before I maybe throw it back to you, John, at least in terms of a comment about the covenant itself, I may want to make one or two comments about its significance, but I know we're going to talk about that a lot later.

The curses and the obligations of the covenant of works endure, meaning that the creation is still groaning and we are still groaning. We are still falling. Our bodies are still dying. We are all born dead spiritually into a condition and a state of sin and corruption, and only by the grace of God through Christ are we liberated from that and promised eternal life with God.

So the curses still endure. The obligations by way of our obligation to obey God still endure as our creator, but the promises that would accompany the covenant of works proper, like do these things and you really will live, those things do not endure.

The promise of eternal life through what we do is now impossible. Now, there's a question that's been asked that's a good one. How would we then understand, like Leviticus 18 .5 and other passages where we're told, you know, do these things and live by them, for example.

I mean, I could go ahead and speak to that now, John, or I can wait. I don't know what makes more sense.

Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.

Okay.

I mean, in short, I think the answer to that question is that the mosaic law that's given, the covenant God makes with Moses, which is where we see, like in Leviticus 18 .5, do these things and live, it's what Paul is referencing in Galatians three, and it's what Jesus is referencing even in the Sermon on the Mount, et cetera.

That law given is what we would say, John and I would understand as 1689 federalists, that the mosaic law is in one sense, it is not the covenant of works proper, it is not the covenant of works, capital C, capital W itself, but it is a type of it in one sense.

It is like the covenant of works is being reissued. A type of the covenant of works is being reissued. Remember again, the purpose of the law from a reformed perspective is to what? The first use is to show us our sin and drive us to the Messiah, drive us to faith in Christ.

And so the law's first and primary function is that. It's secondly given by God to restrain our corruption. It's thirdly given by God to the Christian as our guide for living in Christ. And so all of those functions endure.

And even to say, do these things and you'll live by them is, I would understand in that first use of the law sense, if you did in theory, you know, if you could, which you can't, you know, do these things perfectly, then you would do what God requires, but because you have failed, you are now driven outside of yourself to Messiah.

And so it's a type in one sense. The law is a type of the covenant of works, though it is not the covenant of works itself. That would be my answer to that question. John, thoughts?

No, no, I think that's good. Before, I think, I know that we'll have a lot more closing, we'll have time to close some stuff down. So what I want to do is interact with you guys and then whatever that we don't cover, we'll come back to.

Oh, the Noahic? Yeah, sure. So what's interesting about the Noahic covenant, in our covenant theology series, if you haven't heard that, you can go to our website and listen to that. The way in which you have to understand that there's different kinds, different types of covenants.

So the covenant that's with Adam, the covenant of works, is there's an obligation required on his side where he must meet the demands. And if he meets the demands, he earns for himself eternal life. If he fails to meet the demands, then he is cursed with death.

With the Noahic covenant, it's very different. So the Noahic covenant comes out of necessity. As Sam says in his book, which Justin and I were having a conversation about this beforehand, that you have, this is chapter 80 in the middle, right before he goes into point two, it says, mankind reached a height of evil that threatened the extinction of the holy line, so the Lord destroyed humanity to preserve his promise of salvation, and now human multiplication can again serve the purpose.

This is the new commission. So what you have here is, if you're reading Genesis 5 and 6, you realize that humans have completely lost their mind. They are debauched, the way that God describes it is that every man's doing right with his own eyes.

The promise given to Eve and her line has the potential of being snuffed out. And so God gives this command to Noah to build the ark, and he gets his family in there and he destroys the whole world, and then he brings Noah out of the ark.

And in this, he says, listen, I'll never do this again, and my promise to you is I'm going to make this covenant. And it's very similar language that we see in the garden as well. But God says, I will make, and for the sign of the covenant, I will give you a bow in the sky, right?

So go ahead.

Justin Perdue. So that covenant, like the covenant of works in terms of, there are portions of it that endure, the entirety of the Noahic covenant endures. It is a common grace covenant that God has made with all mankind through Noah.

And it is a covenant through which he will preserve the creation. He introduces a kind of stability to the creation so that the promised seed of the woman, the Redeemer, could come and accomplish redemption.

Jon Moffitt. Yeah. And there's a lot of other theological implications going on when it comes to the Noahic covenant, which we're really not going to get into here because it's not really a part of the flow of covenant theology.

If you guys have a question about it. I mean, Sam deals with a little bit of the new requirements dealing with retribution for murder and marriage and things like that. But for the sake of today's discussion, it's not really what we're going to talk about.

And certainly we would see some types and shadows even in what God does through Noah in foreshadowing of certain kinds of redemption and things of that nature. But you're right, in terms of the flow of covenant theology, I think it's appropriate to kind of keep the covenant of works and the covenant of Noah together, and then as we move into the covenant with Abraham, we are clearly shifting gears into a different kind of arena of covenant theology, which obviously is for conversations down the road.

Okay.

What we're going to do now is grab some of your guys' questions, and then I'm sure we'll talk a lot about preaching and the implications of covenant theology, which will allow us to get a little bit more into it.

And I certainly want to talk about the significance of the covenant of works. And I think some of the guys have already asked some questions about that. Like the significance of denying it.

And in doing so, we'll probably even bring some more clarity around the covenant of works. The nice thing about this is that we assumed you will read the chapter or have read it, and so we won't necessarily dive into all of the details.

Matthew, you have the first question. Hey man, just raise your hand on either your phone or your computer, and that will allow us to enable your audio. There you are. All right, my friend. Welcome. Why don't you introduce yourself and then ask us your question.

You just have to unmute yourself there. Hey man, welcome.

Yeah.

Hey Matthew.

Hello, I'm Matt. I'm a pastor in a place called Saskatchewan, which is a province in Canada.

Awesome, brother.

Awesome, bro. Ask your question.

Okay. So you did bring up and answer this question, so I might add on to this, but my question was, since the covenant of works in the garden has been abrogated, what are we to make of the passages speaking about perfect obedience equals eternal life presently?

And I quoted Leviticus 18 .5, Romans 2 .13, 7 .10, 10 .5, Luke 25 to 28. Um, yeah. So, and from the answer that you gave, uh, Justin, I was wondering, uh, you, you did state that it's the, it seems like the, it's the general view of the 1689 Federalists of republication.

Am I correct in saying that?

Republication that's, you are correct in that. And by republication, the, the framers, even of the 1689 would have not understood it to be the covenant of works itself, the law, but it, but it is a reissuing of a type of the covenant of works, you know, in terms of like what God requires.

Okay. Yeah. I was just, I was just curious because in fact, I'm, I'm preaching on covenant of works this Sunday. So I wanted to bang out some details.

There you go.

And that's sure.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, that's a good, Joshua put an excellent comment there. Typological republication, not formal.

Yeah.

I think that's fair.

Um, yeah.

Yeah.

Because formal republication would be the actual reissuing of the covenant of works proper. And that is not where we would understand the law to be.

Yeah, I think I understand that. I knew that because, um, and doing some research on that. And I, I saw that it wasn't the actual, because those positive laws are not there anymore. But we still have the, the reality is as how I say it, that the reality of the perfect obedience equals eternal life.

Right.

Right.

So the, even the pattern, it's almost, you could almost use the language typological, or you could even use the language of pattern, you know, the law. And even language like Leviticus 18, five, for example, is, is patterned after, you know, the covenant of works.

In that regard, the covenant of works itself has been abrogated, as you said, in the garden of Eden, I would think that's a fair way to, to frame it as well.

Thank you. That's helpful.

That's a great question, Matthew. He's really good question.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Um, Joshua, you had a question, um, if you wanted to answer it, um, and jump on here and dialogue about that with us, that'd be great. Just raise your hand. If not, we can read it.

There he is. Hey man.

Hi guys. Josh here living in Melbourne, Australia. I'm a church planter leading a congregation.

That's awesome. Yes.

Um, so my question was regarding the relationship between what we're studying right now and the, the categorization of what, what Sam has called the covenant or sorry, the kingdom of creation. Um, and then later on we get the kingdom of Christ.

And there seems to be a difference there. You got Israel in the middle, but that aside, is there a relationship between two kingdom theology or reformed two kingdom theology, which I assume we might be able to connect with the kingdom of creation, which is everyone.

It's common. And then the kingdom of Christ, which is God's people specifically, is a relationship between that. And right now we're talking about the covenant of works, the covenant of grace. Uh, is there any connection?

And, and, um, if so, uh, how do we understand that?

Yeah, that's a, that's a good observation. And I would say for those of you on here, if you guys haven't read Van Drunen's book, uh, you need to, you absolutely, absolutely need to read that book. And, and the reason is, is that it's going to, it's going to help you as a pastor, uh, know how to shepherd your people with the idea of, okay, this is, this is, this is part of the earthly kingdom, or we could call the kingdom of creation as he's using it here.

And then we have the heavenly kingdom or that of Christ's kingdom. And what often what's happening, and we're going to, we're going to do a podcast on this soon. Theonomist, what you're doing is you end up mixing those two together.

And when you do that, you, you have a lot of the craziness that's happening right now within the United States with, you know, somehow God has moved his, you know, the, America is now this new theocratic nation where God is now governing us and the president is basically the pastor of the United States.

So yeah, I would, I would absolutely agree with you, Joshua, that, that Sam is, is, is setting up here a two kingdom theology, and I think that understanding the responsibilities that we have underneath the kingdom of creation, uh, is very different and that is not given to the church, that's given to all humanity.

That's a really, it's a really good observation. Versus, um, the covenant of works and how that plays out later on with the imputation of Christ is given to the church, but, uh, the covenant of works, as far as Adam falling, we are all in Adam, therefore we all have all died.

Whether you're a Christian or not, it doesn't really matter. That application applies to you.

Go ahead, JP.

Yeah.

So I think the way that I would connect these dots, and I think you've done a lot of this already, Joshua, is the, the covenant of works and the curses that accompany it, obviously it still is characteristic of the, of the common kingdom to use that two kingdom language.

Um, in one sense, the curses though, of the covenant of works are still a thing, even in the redemptive kingdom now, they will not always be right. So that matters. The covenant God made with Noah certainly is a common grace kind of covenant that is still the order of the day in the common kingdom.

But then certainly once we get to the covenant of grace, we are talking about a redemptive kingdom reality, um, for sure. So as we get to the covenant of grace, where it's promised initially in Genesis 3 15, and then it unfolds through farther steps throughout the rest of revelation, established, accomplished in Christ, um, in the new covenant, that covenant of grace reality is without doubt a redemptive kingdom reality.

So there's some overlap in, I don't know that I would make like stark distinctions, right? I think there's some overlap in that, you know, the curses of the covenant of works obviously rule the day in the common kingdom, the Noahic covenant is still the rule of the day in the common kingdom, the curses though, of the covenant of works are still a thing, you know, for us, you know, because we are not yet resurrected bodily, incorruptible, imperishable, et cetera.

Uh, but then the covenant of grace, certainly, I think you would only see that unfold in the redemptive kingdom from a two kingdom view, that would be for how I would think through it. And that was just me on the fly kind of thinking through that.

All right. Joshua, if you don't have any other thoughts, we'll, uh, we'll move on to.

The comments or any other questions.

Yeah.

No, yeah, that's, that's really helpful. I was particularly interested in thinking about how, um, we're, we as Christians are not under the covenant of works, um, or neither do we have the consequences in terms of, um, eternal damnation or anything like that.

But what you said, Justin, regarding that overlap is that in a sense, because we're all part of the common kingdom, we're still going to continue affected being affected by the covenant of works being broken, correct.

And, and brother, even thinking about things that are cherished, I know I trust by all the guys on this, on this zoom session here, like the saint center reality, for example, and what Paul describes in Romans seven, Galatians five 17, and in particularly pointed ways.

Um, the fact that we are still centers, right. Well, why is that? It's because the curses of the covenant of works and our corrupt nature in Adam is still with us. You know, though we have been delivered from it, like you said, we're not under it, but we still experienced the consequences of Adam's fall.

And one day we will be finally delivered from that. And we'll dwell in the redemptive kingdom one day as God's covenant of redemption is completely accomplished and consummated it, you know, it's going to be epic and there will no longer be the curse in any regard.

So yeah, that's, well, I think it's good. That's just good stuff to think through.

Yeah.

Another, another, another good point too, is that Sam makes this in his book that, um, there are no, when God gives Noah, these new rules, there is no, if you don't obey them, sure, you know, it's kind of like, you need to do this.

And then, you know, that's kind of what, what I was going to say. I mean, God's common grace to the common kingdom exists for the purposes of the redemptive kingdom. I mean, if we wanted to even think about it that way, because yeah.

I mean, really those commands are a common grace.

Sure.

And God's common grace saying, I'm never going to destroy the earth again by a flood. The rainbow is still in the sky. So the Noahic covenant is still a thing that, that benefits the common kingdom, but it ultimately serves the purposes of God's plan of redemption that the redemptive kingdom benefits from because Christ would come, you know, the creation is stabilized, God will not destroy it, the seed of the woman can come, the redeemer can come and accomplish our salvation.

So it's kind of neat to think about, you know, how all of these things so beautifully flow into God's plan of redemption that he's always had.

Hey, Joshua, what time is it there in Australia?

It's like, no, it's 11 .7 AM.

Oh, so it's in the morning for you.

Yeah, brother. Brother, I remember being, this is, we don't need to take long with this. I mean, I remember flying from like DC to LAX to Melbourne and yeah, just the kind of like complete flipping of my body clock on that, on that particular trip a number of years ago.

And, uh, yeah. So when you were like Melbourne, I was like, man, I remember Melbourne. I have fond memories of it. And it's probably like mid morning there. So anyway.

Yeah.

We're in the future. We always get to the lowest day before you guys.

So thanks for coming back to the future with us, you know?

All right.

So that was a dad joke. We won't do that again.

Cody.

It's good to have you back on here. My friend, our resident Presbyterian. You want to hop on here and ask your question or do you just want me to ask it in case you had a follow-up question?

Hey guys, can you hear me?

Yeah, man, we can.

Thank you for letting a Presbyterian come on here.

Brother, we're so excited to have you. Thank you for putting up with us.

No problem. All right. So the question I have is what are the consequences in preaching and in life when a minister ignores or denies the covenant of works?

I don't think we have enough time.

Like we're going to have to put a, we're going to have to set a shot clock on this one because.

Yeah, no kidding. Hey man, before I mute you, go ahead and tell us where you're at and where you're pastoring. That way the guys can say, Hey.

All right. I'm from Harriet, South Dakota. I've been pastoring at First Reformed Church here and I'm enjoying it. And we, we have a, a town of, of, of about 430 people.

Brother. Yeah.

The Dakota rule. I've never been to the one thing I learned about Cody. Is that, is it an hour and a half or two hours to the nearest Walmart?

Hour and a half.

Right. That's a, that's almost like living in another country right there, man.

You get used to it.

I bet you do. Hey, thanks for the question. Thanks for coming on.

Cody, I bet you still have better internet than John. Just saying we, we deal with John's internet issues all the time.

I do have internet issues. All right. Thanks Cody.

Yeah. So fall out of denying the covenant of works. Uh, okay. I mean, my first thought is if anybody's familiar with future justification, um, that immediately pops into my brain, uh, where kind of two-step justification, two-step salvation, right.

Where we by faith in Christ are justified and have access to eternal life, but we will finally acquire possession of eternal life by faith in Christ plus good works. Um, that's an immediate theological fallout, which I could use really strong language about how ridiculous I think that is, um, biblically and theologically.

And then what that means for a preacher, what that means for a Christian. Um, my gosh, I mean, you, in my, from my perspective, from a reformed understanding of human nature, saint center realities, things as nature.

If anything depends on us and that there's anything left for us to contribute, we are all, we're up the creek and we're all damned. And I think that you see this in guys like John Piper. I'm assuming I can say this here.